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{
    "id": 1124438,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1124438/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 526,
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    "content": "PWDs, youth, marginalised groups and older persons and how they can be mainstreamed. You will also have the older persons’ human rights issues department. You will then have an umbrella, which is the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights body being mandated to report to Parliament on a lean budget, instead of having all those commissions being clamored for, getting three to seven commissioners with secretariat below them. That is the wisdom of this Bill. In the debate, there has been a question about what is going to happen to the National Gender and Equality Commission henceforth or if we were to pass the Bill. I request the Members to look at Bills before we debate them. We have an explicit transitory clause within the Bill in terms of how the commissioners, upon the merger, are going to integrate and represent the interests of both commissioners. We know there are contractual obligations of the State and the staff of the commissions are going to be treated. I assure the Members that what they are seeing in the Bill is not the totality of what the Committee will be transacting. During public participation, we got observations which we are putting together in addition to what is being said here. There are amendments which the Committee, if Members cared to look at the Report, are already proposing to improve on this. However, the main thing is that, let us streamline human rights issues under a single commission as Article 59(1) prescribes, then we have specific issues to the various segments of our society addressed. The matter of gender still remains a sensitive matter. It saddens me when the idea of gender is misinterpreted to mean women. Gender is gender. Gender and Equality Commission serves the women as it serves men, and those gender issues become pertinent. Let gender find its location within the Kenya National Human Rights and Equality Commission, with focus instead of our being duplicitous. In the current set up, when you are dealing with gender issues as a human right, do you call the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights or the National Gender and Equality Commission? These are the things we are trying to deal with in as much as we are reducing the wage bill on matters that can be done properly with one body mandated by the Constitution and properly integrated. With those many remarks, I thank Members for their contributions. This is not a personal Bill. We have no personalised issue. We are providing a solution to the country in terms of how to mainstream these commissions and align them to the Constitution. Members, whatever decisions you make, you do so alive to what we set out in the memorandum of objects as our guiding motto and principle in terms of bringing this Bill. Thank you, and I humbly reply."
}